After years of flashing cash and even changing his nickname to “Money,” Floyd Mayweather Jnr’s lawsuit alleging that $340 million in earnings were misappropriated from him by Showtime has grabbed the industry’s attention.
“Did you get screwed, or is this your own financial ignorance?” Paulie Malignaggi wondered aloud on Wednesday’s episode of ProBoxTV’s “BoxingScene Today.”
“This kind of money, I’m going to track it, [because] $340 million does not slip through the cracks.”
Mayweather’s lawsuit, which named former Showtime Sports President Stephen Espinoza, alleges that the fighter’s longtime advisor Al Haymon was also complicit in the misdirecting of funds Mayweather believes are his.
Industry officials have countered that it’s not only suspect that Mayweather is bringing this claim nearly nine years after he staged the second of his two most lucrative prizefights in history versus Conor McGregor, it also may confirm a recent Business Insider report that painted Mayweather, 49, as financially troubled.
“This is why everyone says keep your finances private,” Malignaggi said. “The last thing you need is for [financial] things to go wrong and you were showing off [your wealth]. Now, you have egg on your face.”
While Mayweather was believed to have made $600 million from the 2015 Manny Pacquiao fight alone, the scope of the alleged loss “makes me think someone else has gotten into his ear, that someone else is going through his books,” analyst and former 140lbs titleholder Chris Algieri said on the show.
“How do we use him to extract wealth?”
The fallout is that Mayweather has made these allegations against powerfully legally backed entities, with Espinoza himself an attorney who will not shy from a legal counterpoint.
“If this is true, you’ve got a massive situation – the reverberations are massive,” Malignaggi said. “If it’s not true, it’s going to come back on you. These people know how to maneuver.”
Added Algieri: “This is a really big deal and can get Floyd in a lot of trouble. There’s always a paper trail. [Showtime is] not stupid.”
Malignaggi knows firsthand after losing his boxing analyst position at Showtime before the premium cable network shuttered its boxing coverage in 2023.
As the situation was transpiring, Malignaggi claims he was silenced by a gag order.
“You’ve got to let all the pieces play out,” he said. “Let the chips fall where they may.”
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
